Talk:Age of Sail/Archives/2021

Golden Age and Decline

The Golden Age is said to begin in 1850, while the next section states the the Age of Sail had ended by 1873, leaving only 23 years for a golden age and swift decline. I assume the dates for the Golden Age are off by a fair bit? Secondus2 (talk) 23:19, 23 October 2019 (UTC)

There is a substantial discussion on this topic at WT:WikiProject_Ships/Archive_65#Age_of_Sail. Kablammo (talk) 14:55, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

It is misleading to characterize the end of an era based on one vessel, or type of vessel. While battleships may have given up sails in the 1870s (and HMS Alexandra may have been a splendid anachronism), smaller British warships such as corvettes and sloops continued to be built with, carry, and employ sails until the turn of the century. On Calliope's cruise to the Pacific from 1887-1890, "sail was used whenever possible". Evans, The Cruise of H.M.S. "Calliope" in China, Australian and East African Waters 1887–1890, p. 4.

We should not define an era for warships based solely on battleships nor for merchant vessels on transatlantic liners. Merchant sail continued to be constructed and used well into the 20th century. Kablammo (talk) 14:11, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

The WT:WikiProject_Ships#Age_of_Sail shows this is not an "age" that has clear, fixed dates and even the "age" itself may apply only to a modern Eurocentric view of development. That needs to be more fully explained in "Definition" section with a small start at doing so. I am removing the first "citation needed" as that is an introductory statement of the "sky is blue" sort. The cites should be in the following supporting paragraphs supporting a view of naval and commercial "age of sail" eras. In my view the article's purpose must be to educate a novice or naive reader who ran across the term and wants clarification. The clarification is that there is no precise date range and maritime experts and literature qualify the term differently. Despite that fuzzy state the term has value as there was a period in which European based sailing technology dominated worldwide maritime matters and the naval and commercial periods differed in period of dominance. One should not forget those great iron hulled sailing ships operating in bulk trade around the Horn even into the early decades of the 20th century. Palmeira (talk) 15:28, 8 March 2021 (UTC)

Looking again at this article (after some recent edits)
Having precise start/finish dates and defining timepoints of specific battles is misleading. The "fuzzy" start of the Age of Sail (naval) has to take into account the vessels designed as warships that attacked the Spanish Armada (even though with only modest effect), the warship design change ambitions that were current when the Mary Rose sank (failed implementation of a good idea) etc.
No start date is proposed for a merchant marine Age of Sail - there seem to me to be many candidates: bronze age shipwrecks demonstrating extensive sail-based trade routes, the Viking usage of sail, etc.
We already have comments on the lengthy survival of sail in coastal trade (as opposed to the article saying it was just in long-distance bulk cargoes). The last square rigged vessel trading in British home waters ceased in 1936, and if there had not been so many similar coasters sunk by German submarines in WWI, I guess others would have challenged this date.
As ever, the problem is sources - which authoritative writers specifically address these points? ThoughtIdRetired (talk) 20:06, 26 May 2021 (UTC)